Читать книгу The Pretender’s Gold - Scott Mariani, Scott Mariani - Страница 20

At last, too many long and grinding hours after leaving France, Ben’s plane dropped down out of a cold grey sky and he got his first glimpse of Inverness. The quiet airport lay seven miles from the city and had once been a military airfield. Now it was the Gateway to the Highlands and Islands, standing in lonely isolation against a backdrop of misty hills and the distant North Sea.

Disembarking, Ben was glad he’d brought warm clothes. The piercing wind felt as though it was roaring straight down from Iceland, and the sleet promised to turn to snow if the temperature dropped any lower.

His first action was to call Mirella and find out what he already knew, deep inside: still no contact from Boonzie. It was now the third day since she’d last heard from him. ‘I’ll find him,’ Ben assured her.

But he had to get there first.

He hunted for a car rental place and was relieved to find a small independent firm that obviously hadn’t heard about the near-blanket ban imposed on him by most of their larger competitors. For some peculiar reason the latter seemed to object to having their vehicles returned to them riddled with holes, burnt or blown up. But he resolved to take extra care this time around.

The village of Kinlochardaich, Boonzie’s last known location, lay seventy miles inland to the south-west. Ben required a car that could get him to his destination as quickly as possible and was rugged enough to handle the remoter parts of the western Highlands in winter, since there was no telling what kinds of roads or conditions he might meet out there. The answer to his needs was a big, chunky Mercedes four-wheel-drive. Fast and comfortable, a tad luxurious for his needs, but sturdy as hell.

His route was the A82, one of the most famous highways in Scotland since for miles it closely hugged the shoreline of Loch Ness, home of the fabled creature. Ben was too concerned about reaching his target to take in the views across the rippling, mysterious waters of the loch. With the wipers slapping away the sleet and the Merc’s heater belching full blast he ripped by the ruins of Urquhart Castle and the village of Drumnadrochit, empty of holidaymakers at this time of the year but peppered everywhere with signs for Nessieland and monster theme tours. From Fort Augustus the road followed the Caledonian Canal through Glen Mor and along Loch Lochy. More endless, beautiful scenery that Ben flatly ignored as he pressed the big Mercedes along. Road signs were bilingual, in English and Gaelic.

Rather than rely on GPS he had a map of the area imprinted on his mind. The seventy miles took him just over an hour, by which time his winding path had led him deep into ever-remoter country and his car was alone on the road for long periods. The thickening sleet slapped the windscreen and the outside temperature fell to just above zero, but inside was a bubble of warmth. His first glimpse of his destination was the eastern edge of Loch Ardaich, its restless grey waters surrounded by forest and rocky hills whose tops were shrouded in mist. He followed a lonely signpost directing him towards the village of Kinlochardaich, and not long afterwards he was making his way through the quiet, narrow streets.

The houses were mostly grey stone, settled into themselves with the passing of a century or more. He passed an old church with a graveyard, and a village filling station with a workshop and a couple of pumps, a village shop and post office; and soon after that he found the street whose name Mirella had given him.

Ewan’s address would have been one of Boonzie’s first ports of call when he arrived here, aside from visiting his nephew in the hospital, so it would also be Ben’s. He parked in an empty space directly in front of Ewan’s home, which was in a terraced row right on the street. He got out of the Mercedes, stretched his legs and back after the drive, lit up a Gauloise and then locked the car and walked up to the house. The sleet had died off, but the wind was chilly and Ben thought he could smell snow in the air.

As expected, the house was closed up. Ben peered through the front room window but couldn’t see anything through the net curtains. He came away from the front door and walked a little way up the street to where a gap between the houses led, he guessed, around the back.

His guess was right. Ewan’s back yard was a small area of wasteland, weedy and neglected. Ben stood for a moment, drinking in details. He noticed the patch of ground where a vehicle had stood until recently. A van-sized vehicle, judging by the spaces between the bare-earth wheel impressions in the dirt. A single dark oil stain had bled into the ground, the lack of individual splotches telling him that the vehicle had not been moved for a long time prior to being driven away.

He also noticed the discarded set of diesel glow plugs that someone had pulled out of its engine and tossed into the weeds. They weren’t rusty enough to have been there longer than a couple of days. Nearby lay a crumpled strip of emery cloth, reddened from where someone had been polishing up corroded metal.

Ben wondered whether it might have been Boonzie who took the van. He was good at fixing old vehicles, and having travelled up by train he’d have needed some form of transport to get around in. It made sense.

As he pondered Boonzie’s movements, he spied the broken window at the back of Ewan’s house, and walked over to examine it. Someone had obviously let themselves in through the window. Ben reached his arm carefully through the jagged teeth of glass and tried the window catch from inside, but it had since been locked. He wondered about that, too.

The back door was securely bolted from the inside, which might explain why whoever had broken in opted for the window. Three minutes later, Ben had followed their example, but without breaking anything or leaving any trace. What the SAS had taught him about covert entry had been only the beginning of his education. If life had gone differently, he could have been a pretty successful cat burglar.

Inside, Ben found what he’d been afraid he might find. Every room of the house had been thoroughly trashed by a person, or persons, who had evidently been searching for something. Ben noticed that somebody else had since briefly attempted to clear up the living room. His curiosity about who that someone might have been was answered when he found an empty pill bottle lying on the floor. It hadn’t been left here by the intruders, that was for sure. The label was printed in Italian, and showed that the pills had been prescribed to SIG. A. McCULLOCH. The ‘SIG.’ short for ‘Signore’ and the ‘A.’ for Archibald.

Boonzie had been here, all right.

Ben guessed that he might have been given the house key by the police, being next of kin to Ewan. Then since he hadn’t booked anywhere else to stay, Boonzie might have come here intending to use his nephew’s home as a base. Ben wondered if the shock of finding the place in such a mess had caused Boonzie to need to pop the last pills in the medicine bottle. That was a potentially worrying detail. But whatever the case, Boonzie had evidently changed his mind about staying here, and wasted no time in moving on. To where, was another question.

Ben searched the wreckage of the living room until he found what he was now looking for. Ewan McCulloch’s household documents, including house insurance, bills, receipts and credit card statements, had already been given the once-over by the intruders and were scattered about under the upturned drawers of his desk. Ben was more interested in vehicle papers. He supposed that anything like company car or van paperwork would be kept at Ewan’s business premises, but that anything related to a personal vehicle would have been sent to his home address. Again, his guess was right. Among the scattered documents was a registration document, expired insurance renewal letter, road tax reminders and old MOT certificate for a Ford camper van. The log book identified it as being fifteen years old, which probably explained why it had been sitting off the road for a while and had needed some work to get it going.

Now Ben felt more certain that Boonzie had borrowed the camper. However rough and ready, it would make the perfect mobile base. And now that Ben knew the vehicle’s details, he’d already taken an important step towards finding his missing friend.

He lingered a few minutes longer in the house, wondering why anyone would have wanted to ransack it, and how much of this was related to the mysterious gold coin Mirella had told him about. But he wasn’t going to learn anything more by hanging around here. He left the house the same way he’d come in, and walked back around the rear pathway to the street.

The air temperature had dropped half a degree while he was inside Ewan’s place, and though it wasn’t yet four p.m. the light was already fading fast. Dusk came early around these parts in the wintertime. The darkening sky was choked with clouds and the first wispy flakes of what threatened to become a heavier snowfall were loosely spiralling down. The scent of woodsmoke was in the air as villagers kindled their log-burning stoves in readiness for a cold night. Ben zipped up his jacket, took a black wool beanie hat from one pocket and put it on. In the other pocket was a fresh pack of Gauloises and his Zippo lighter. He drew out a cigarette and lit up as he walked past his parked Mercedes and kept walking through the village.

Smoking helped him think as he explored his unfamiliar new surroundings. His thoughts were not comfortable ones. He shared Mirella’s deep concerns about Boonzie’s state of health, and wished that his friend had stayed at home to take care of himself. But Ben’s worries went deeper. Though Kinlochardaich might appear quiet and peaceful, even quaint and romantic, his innate sixth sense warned him of menace and dark secrets lurking behind the facade, like the watchful eyes of predators hidden in the bushes.

Suspected murder. Vicious beatings. Illegal house entry. The apparent disappearance of a man who’d come to investigate. The list was growing. And now Ben, too, was venturing into the danger zone.

As he strolled along he smiled pleasantly and said good evening to a couple of villagers he met. Anyone seeing him would think he was just another visitor to the area: maybe a business traveller passing through, or an adventure tourist on a winter camping expedition into the hills. But for Ben, his casual amble through the village felt like a reconnaissance mission no different from a covert military advance force making a pathfinder sortie deep behind enemy lines. Scouting the lie of the land. Gathering intelligence. Estimating enemy strength and location. Identifying any and all potential threats. His senses were fully fired up and not a single detail of his surroundings escaped his notice as he wandered the streets.

This was his ground zero. His war zone. It didn’t appear that way, not yet. But if bad men were out there doing bad things, and if those bad men had been foolish enough to bring any harm to Ben’s friend, then it was only a question of time before war erupted here. Ben would rip this place apart until he found whoever was responsible. And they would pay for what they’d done.

The snow was beginning to fall thicker and more steadily as he sighted the warm glow emanating from pub windows further down the street. As he got closer he could see the sign above the door that said KINLOCHARDAICH ARMS. The establishment was set back from the road. A few cars were parked outside, their roofs and bonnets dusted powdery white under the amber light of the streetlamps.

In Ben’s experience, there was no better place in which to begin a recce operation than the local public house. He looked at his watch. Only four-fifteen, but the falling darkness and plummeting temperature made it feel much later.

Time for a drink.

He pushed through the pub door and walked inside.